BIRDS OF ETHIOPIA AND KENYA COLONY 189 



Although this species was first described in the Ibis for 1863, the 

 name was published by Heuglin seven years previously^" and the 

 locality of the single specimen was given as Balir el Abiad (that is, 

 White Nile). 



Erlanger ^° was the first worker to study the systematics of this 

 bird and he was unable to come to any definite conclusions because 

 he used as taxonomic characters the amount of gray or rufous in 

 the upperparts, characters now known to be correlated with age. 

 He, however, considered seebohmi and cinotus identical, and used the 

 former name although the latter had priority. Zedlitz " has made 

 the most careful study of the races of this bird, and, in lieu of 

 adequate series, I accept his work as a basis. According to him there 

 are three races, as follows : 



R. c. ductus. — Northern Somaliland, Ethiopia. White Nile, South- 

 ern Somaliland, Kenya Colony, and northeastern Tanganyika Ter- 

 ritory (east and southeast of Lake Victoria). 



R. c. emini. — Ukerewe Island, Lake Victoria, and the districts 

 to the south and west of the lake. 



R. c. seehohmi. — Southwest Africa to Mossamedes (later shown 

 by others to occur also in Southern Rhodesia and northwest Rhodesia 

 as well). 



The characters of Vhe races are those of tarsal length and color of 

 the outer three pairs of rectrices, as follows : 



R. c. cinctus. — Tarsus 57-64 millimeters; outermost rectrix white, 

 second banded with white ; third with some white. 



R. c. emini. — Tarsus 63-66 millimeters; outermost rectrix white, 

 second only partly white, chiefly on the outer web; third with no 

 white. 



R. c. seehohmi. — Tarsus 68-70 millimeters ; outermost rectrix whit- 

 ish, second with only a few white flecks on the outer web ; third with 

 no white. 



In other words, northern birds have the shortest tarsi and the most 

 white in the tail, southern birds have the longest tarsi and the least 

 white in the tail, and birds from in between, are intermediate in 

 character. 



The present series are all typical cinctus, having tarsi 58 to 64 milli- 

 meters in length, and with white. present on the three outer rectrices. 

 The amount of white on the second and third rectrices is quite vari- 

 able ; the white is often replaced by light buffy on the outer web of 

 the third rectrix. 



Besides the birds listed above I have seen two specimens (male and 

 female) of emini from Mkalama (Zengeragusu and Usshoro), Tan- 



*» Sitz. K. Akad. Wiss. Wlen, vol. 19, 1856, p. 306. 

 wjourn. f. Ornith., 1905, p. 60. 

 " Idem. 1914, pp. 622-625. 



